Negotiating risk and leisure-resilience: visiting tourism sites during the COVID-19 pandemic
Date
2025
Authors
Dewi, C.
Nichols, J.
Rofe, M.
Izziah,
Hizra, F.
Editors
Opdyke, A.
Rivera, L.
Rivera, L.
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Book chapter
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Event/exhibition information: The 2022 Aceh International Workshop and Expo on Sustainable Tsunami Disaster Recovery (AIWEST-DR), Sydney, Australia, 29/09/2022-30/09/2022
Source details - Title: Inclusive and Integrated Disaster Risk Reduction, 2025 / Opdyke, A., Rivera, L. (ed./s), pp.537-545
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Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced people to rethink the ways they understand and manage risks in all aspects of their lives, especially in the tourism sector. To reduce risks, almost all authorities across the world have imposed several levels of restrictions, such as restricted mobility and quarantine measures, which heavily affect local and global mobility. These restrictions on mobility have had a major impact on the tourism industry. Tourism sites such as museums, heritage sites, beaches, and parks have been forced to close and reopen their doors on an irregular basis in an effort to reduce risk during the pandemic.
Thus, this research investigates the reasons behind people’s choices to visit or not visit tourist sites and understand the ways society negotiates the risks during their visits amid the pandemic. This research conducted random semi-structured interviews with 118 people at the most-visited tourism sites in Banda Aceh and Aceh Besar, Indonesia. The research found that in order to reduce the risk of COVID-19 exposure, some people preferred to stay at home, especially in the early stage of the Pandemic; later however, some of them found being at home did minimize their risk of being infected, but they felt the need to go out for leisure activities for their psychological well-being.
Visiting tourist sites is a very popular way for people to spend their free time. Besides health factors, respondents’ trust in the media’s information regarding the pandemic as being either true or false influenced the ways people negotiated their risk and willingness to spend leisure time at tourism sites.
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Copyright 2025 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG